Burning Atlanta
The fundraising apparatus and political network designed to keep the people engaged in “domestic terrorism” in Georgia out of jail is connected to the Democratic Party and its proxies.
Manuel Esteban Paez Teran was a 26-year-old activist who joined his friends in protesting a planned public safety training center—coined “Cop City” by critics—in Atlanta forestland. They camped out in the area to halt its construction. But they brought with them more than s’mores, sleeping bags, and Teran’s they/it pronouns.
On the morning of Jan. 18, officers attempting to clear the site of the future facility gave Teran verbal commands. He allegedly replied by shooting a Georgia State Patrol trooper and got himself killed in the ensuing exchange of fire. Police said in a statement that the projectile recovered from the trooper’s wound matched Teran’s Smith & Wesson M&P Shield 9mm handgun. His death helped spark rioting that consumed downtown Atlanta in violence, but this wasn’t the first flare-up. Last year, these leftists hurled Molotov cocktails at officers and AT&T workers and attacked firefighters. In one incident, police stood with their backs turned to a fence when a flaming spirit flew over at them.
A handful of people have been arrested so far. Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens even rebuked those insisting that the anti-police riots were, as they say, “mostly peaceful,” and said that six protestors face “domestic terrorism” charges. He noted that agitators “had explosives,” “burned down a police car,” and “broke windows at businesses.” Still, it all has the feel of Kabuki theatre. Dickens’ real dilemma is that his own party subsidizes and facilitates political violence.
Teran was connected to a movement called Defend the Atlanta Forest. In a tweet, the group indicated Teran was fond of cop-killer Assata Shakur.
The left-wing outlet Green Matters described Defend the Atlanta Forest as “decentralized, with no official leadership, spokespeople, or organization status in order to retain anonymity, and is made up of various individuals and groups.” That sounds pretty grassroots. But the group’s website shows that it is plugged into the Democratic Party’s broader organizational network.
Upon visiting the “Solidarity” page on Defend the Atlanta Forest’s website, visitors find a list of ways to show their support. “Donate to the Atlanta Solidarity Fund to support legal costs for arrested protestors and ongoing legal action,” the page states.
The Atlanta Solidarity Fund’s donations page shows that it is hosted by Action Network, an online platform that left-wing groups use to organize and fundraise. The fund states on the network’s page that it bails out “activists who are arrested for participating in social justice movements, and helps them get access to lawyers.”
But the Action Network’s main clients are scrappy upstarts like the Democratic National Committee, the AFL-CIO, and Black Lives Matter. The front page of its website prominently displays the following advertisement: “After three months of using Action Network the DNC shattered all sorts of fundraising records.”
In short, the fundraising apparatus and political network designed to keep the people engaged in “domestic terrorism,” as Mayor Dicken’s said, out of jail is connected to the Democratic Party and its proxies.
This part of the story carries echoes of the Minnesota Freedom Fund, a jailbreak fund promoted by Vice President Kamala Harris. It received millions of dollars in donations during the George Floyd riots, which it used, in turn, to free a variety of heinous characters.
The Washington Free Beacon reported last August that the fund secured the release of Shawn Michael Tillman, who went on to shoot and kill someone in St. Paul. “Tillman’s most recent felony conviction was in November 2018 for indecent exposure in the presence of a minor,” the Beacon noted. “He had seven prior counts of indecent exposure at the time.”
The fund also helped free an alleged domestic abuser and career criminal named George Howard. Shortly after he left the pen, police arrested him again for murder.
Last but not least, court documents obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation show it secured the release of Timothy Wayne Columbus, a man accused of raping an eight-year-old girl. By August 2020, KMSP-TV reported that the Harris-endorsed fund had received $35 million in donations.
There exists no institutional or organizational parity for the right in this regard, which is partly why left-wing rioting is tolerated on a level that similar behavior from the right would never be.
People arrested in connection to the comparatively less violent riots at the U.S. Capitol continue to languish behind bars, with some taking their own lives out of the conviction that a fair trial is off the table. By contrast, although the 2020 riots were the most destructive in modern American history and claimed the lives of several people, the “vast majority of citations and charges against George Floyd protesters were ultimately dropped,” an analysis by The Guardian found. In New York alone, hundreds of charges against rioters and looters were dropped.
This phenomenon goes beyond the U.S.
Last summer, police shot at farmers in the Netherlands rallying against environmental policies they say would crush their livelihoods. Law enforcement ruthlessly used heavy machinery to knock over tractors with protesting farmers still inside. Others were seen being hauled into black vans.
Canadian truckers protesting coronavirus health measures suffered a similar fate. Police broke blockades by smashing the windows of vehicles and dragging drivers out into the street. This level of aggression is rarely seen directed at the left from authorities in the liberal West.
The Atlanta riots come at a time when the city struggles to recruit and retain police officers amid soaring homicide rates. Last May, local media reported that the city has fewer than 1,400 police staff. But even if Atlanta put more badges on the beat, it’s unlikely they’d focus entirely on crimefighting under the current order of things.
We are, unfortunately, often reminded that Sam Francis was on to something when he coined the term “anarcho-tyranny” to describe a particularly noxious synthesis of seemingly dialectical opposites:
the combination of oppressive government power against the innocent and the law-abiding and, simultaneously, a grotesque paralysis of the ability or the will to use that power to carry out basic public duties such as protection or public safety. And, it is characteristic of anarcho-tyranny that it not only fails to punish criminals and enforce legitimate order but also criminalizes the innocent.
He was right, and we are worse off for it.
This is good reporting.
Elected public officials who aid people engaging in violent civil disturbances need to be confronted by their constituents.
Go to the meeting shod; leave barefoot.
And on two related points: Look for an increase in Atlanta crime over the next couple of years. (Ferguson Effect) And Buckhead must be allowed to secede.
Excellently written. Pray for America🙏❤️🇺🇸